Automobiles or vehicles such as cars, pick-up trucks, vans, recreational vehicles (RVs) and sports utility vehicles are often used to pull trailers. They may pull a boat, a cargo trailer, or some other type of load. They also may carry accessories such as motorcycle or wheelchair lifts, toolboxes and the like. Two of the most common means by which trailers or accessories attach to a vehicle are 1) a vehicle frame-mounted ball-and-socket drop hitch and 2) a vehicle frame-mounted rectangular, tubular hitch socket which may receive a removable ball-and-socket hitch accessory therein. Usually, such hitch-receiving equipment is mounted underneath the bumper toward the rear of the vehicle in order to facilitate the towing of hitched trailers.
The hitch socket is rectangular, and usually square, and includes a hole that is dimensioned in cross section to receive therein a trailer's or accessory's elongate mounting hitch, or so-called "tongue". An operator secures the hitch by inserting a pin or bolt through four laterally aligned holes formed in the tongue and hitch socket.
An unused or open hitch socket may be found to be subjectively unattractive. But, much of the time, the vehicle operator has no need to tow a trailer or to carry an accessory. Accordingly, the primary purpose of the invention is to cover or substantially cover the ordinarily unappealing opening of the hitch socket with a decorative body or element having an interesting or attractive shape, color, picture, message, or otherwise visibly decorative characteristic.